


Bright Nights (Kittens, Children and no Rubber Ducks)

by pprfaith



Series: Rubber Duck!Verse [5]
Category: Southern Vampire Mysteries - Charlaine Harris, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Humor, Kid Fic, M/M, Shapeshifting, Telepathy, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the telepath won't come to the vampire, the vampire will come to the telepath. Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Nights (Kittens, Children and no Rubber Ducks)

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt/Prompter:** X-Men: First Class, [Rubber Duck!Verse](http://pprfaith.livejournal.com/tag/series%3A%20rubber%20duck)  
>  Charles/Erik, _Their evening gets interrupted by murder, mayhem and madness._ \- for peaceful_fury and Jenn who gave me pretty much identical prompts.
> 
> So. I meant to write this anyway, so the prompts were awesome and I hope I did them justice. The end is a bit abrupt and the whole thing perhaps a bit more cracky than intended, but Amusewithaview dared me to write something with kittens, rainbows and unicorns in it. I didn’t manage the rainbows and unicorns, but the kitten totally got stuffed into this. _See?_

+

“Either,” Emma said, lounging on Erik’s bed as he got dressed for the night, “You’re very eager to go and destroy your new pet’s life, or you’re just that desperate to see him again.” She sat up, smoothed her white skirt down her thighs. “I’m not sure which I’d prefer.”

“Why are you complaining?” Erik demanded, “You’ll get your kicks out of it either way.”

And she would. When Erik had called her right after sunset and told her to call Azazel and get him to open the Club because they were going on a field trip, she’s just laughed. But really, Erik’s patience had just about run out at this point.

Charles, who was very much not a pet, no matter how much Erik would have preferred that, had been a ghost ever since the night Erik had met him. It had been a week since then and he’d seen neither hide nor hair of the man. He could feel him, of course, slipping in an out of his mind like a phantom. These days, Charles’s voice was the first thing he heard after rising and generally the last before he went to die. Charles was reluctant to tell Erik why, exactly, but the telepath appeared to find Erik’s mind soothing. It was a bargaining chip. An advantage. Erik should have used it, but he sort of hated that it made him feel excited instead. He was like a virgin heading to the marriage bed, nervous and giddy around the damn telepath. It was embarrassing.

But despite the mental contact and the rousing discussions they’d had in Erik’s head, Erik had yet to actually _see_ the man again since the first night. Charles kept promising to come to the Club but something always happened. First it had been the full moon that, apparently, left the man as the only caretaker for a whole bunch of children, since all the other ‘teachers’ at his little club house shifted. Then one of his kids had set half the garden on fire in a fit of pique and then another had fallen down the stairs and broken a leg. Then he’d had an appointment with his family lawyers – the sharks, he’d said – and then something else and something else.

Erik had enough. Which was why he and Emma were going to visit Xavier mansion in Westchester tonight. If the prophet won’t come to the mountain…And no, Erik himself didn’t know either if he wanted to mess with Charles or just see him. It was pathetic, really.

But he couldn’t help it. Charles was everything Erik wanted, served on a silver platter with a mouth made for sex. He was a way to Sebastian, he was power, he was sex, he was amusing. He was an equal. He was _not boring_.

On the bed, Emma heaved an improbable sigh, looking very put-upon at his circular thoughts. He fought the urge to smack her and settled instead on reciting Wordsworth in his head, which she despised. Poor baby.

She huffed and stood, marching out of the room like he’d just flashed her. A moment later she called from the living room, “Get a move on, _Master_ , before I start shredding furniture out of boredom.”

“You are not a cat,” Erik informed her as he grabbed his leather jacket and keys and motioned for her to get going.

“Ah, but I despise that sofa,” she confessed with a little smirk. He rolled his eyes and pointed at the door.

“Why am I taking you along again?”

“Because you love me.”

Right. And why was that again?

In his head, there was only laughter.

+

The mansion was opulent to the extreme and Erik couldn’t decide if it fit the telepath perfectly or not at all. They made their way down the endless driveway at a leisurely pace, expecting to hear Charles in their minds at any moment. When nothing came, Erik actually frowned. Maybe the man wasn’t at home?

He hadn’t felt Charles this evening when he’d risen. Out of range? Or had something happened?

“You are like a lovesick puppy,” Emma remarked, viciously.

“Fuck you,” he retorted, smiling brightly at her. If she didn’t curb that tongue, he was going to raid her closet and burn all her shoes before she rose one night.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she snapped, suddenly tense. He let his smile grow wide, flashed a little fang, and said nothing at all. He would and she knew it. Brat or not, there were limits. If she poked him too hard…

They got out of the car and there was still no sign of Charles. Erik was wondering how they were supposed to make themselves known since there was no doorbell and he doubted that knocking would get them anywhere, when the door was flung open.

There was a girl standing in the open doorway, a broad grin on her face. Her hair was fire engine red but her eyes were dark, instead of the customary green. She looked unsettling to Erik, who’d grown up in a day and age when redheads had been drowned at birth as bringers of evil, witch children. He knew it was all a load of bull nowadays, but old beliefs sunk into your bones and never quite left. But there was a gap in her teeth and she really didn’t look all that evil, so he just quirked an eyebrow at her, deciding to be amused. She couldn’t have been older than ten, maybe eleven.

“Almost twelve,” she snapped, a bit peeved and then let go of the heavy door she’d pulled open with both hands to slap them over her face. “Inside words,” she mumbled into her palms. “Not supposed to read.”

She squinted at him and then at Emma, then at him again. Then she suddenly dropped her hands, beamed again and chirped, “You’re the sea!”

Emma snorted inelegantly and Erik opened his mouth to ask something along the lines of _what the hell?_ , when the girl flounced backwards out of the way and, with a sweet grin, said, “Please, come in.”

O-kay. She knew what they were, she had corrected Erik’s estimation of her age and she talked about ‘inside words’.

“You’re another telepath?” Erik asked as the magic of the threshold parted to let him through.

She nodded so hard her head was in danger of bouncing off.”The Professor says if I try really hard, I’ll be as good as him one day. And you shouldn’t be worried, he’s here. He’s just playing with Jimmy, that’s why he can’t hear you right now.”

Emma entered behind Erik and closed the door quietly. “Who’s Jimmy?” she asked, trying and failing to hide her amusement, and a whole lot of awe. Until last week, she’d never met another telepath in three hundred years. And now there wasn’t just Charles, but a little girl, too?

Erik wondered, not for the first time, just what he’d agreed to offer his protection for. Charles seemed to be hiding a virtual zoo of powers in this building.

The redhead looked at Emma, tilted her head to one side and then scrunched up her nose cutely. Emma jumped but then relaxed, grinning widely. It was the kind of grin she usually only got when her favorite designer was revealing a new collection. Uh-oh.

The girl shot Erik a look and giggled, but then turned back to Emma, one eyebrow raised in challenge. It was Emma who answered her own question. “Jimmy is a leech. He… nullifies magic and… powers?” She looked to the kid for confirmation.

She nodded. “The Professor sometimes thinks that he should put Jimmy in the room next to his study so he can work in silence. But I’m not supposed to tell.”

She cocked her head again, obviously thinking at Emma some more. Emma bit back a smile and nodded a few times before the girl straightened and clapped her hands. “Okay. I’ll get the Prof for you. Can you wait here?”

She turned to Emma for confirmation once more. Erik wondered why the girl was intentionally ignoring him.

“You’re the sea,” she informed him, suddenly solemn before he could finish the thought. “I promised.”

Then she spun on her heel and ran off, toward a giant staircase leading out of the foyer. Erik and Emma were left behind to stare at each other, half bemused, half shell-shocked by the little spitfire.

If all the children were like that it was no wonder Charles had no time for Erik. By the gods, but that precocious little thing was exhausting. Or maybe Erik just wasn’t used to children anymore. He hadn’t really been around any since…

No. He shoved the thought away, ignored Emma’s searching look. Since the night he’d met the telepath, memories had started swimming to the surface of his mind, unbidden. Sooner or later, Emma would ask about what she was seeing, fire, screams, children dancing in the sunlight.

He would have to tell her then.

But not now.

“Give it _back_!”

The screech was loud enough to actually make both vampires flinch. Enhanced hearing and screaming children didn’t mix well. Who’d known? A second later, a little boy came skidding into the room. Literally, skidding. It looked like he was sliding on a thin layer of ice that was forming directly in front of him and vaporizing behind him in small ribbons of steam.

“Never!” he hollered, clutching what looked like a photo album to his chest as he grinned toothily.

He shot past Emma like a greased bullet and then almost collided with Erik’s legs. Vampire reflexes were the only thing saving them from a graceless collision. Erik was calmly stepping out of the way, highly amused by the whole thing, when the girl who’d been screeching came tumbling into the room. She was a bit older than the redhead, probably fourteen and she was stunning. Her skin was mocha brown, her hair shockingly white. From the looks of it, the color was natural and her eyes matched. It looked like she had no irises or pupils, just whitewhite eyes that looked absolutely eerie. Emma was surprised enough to let it show for a split second as the girl clapped her hands with a furious expression and a bolt of lightning slammed into the ground just outside the window.

“Bobby!” the girl bellowed, two octaves lower than before, “Give me back my album or I will fry your scrawny ass!”

To emphasize her point she clapped again and yes, another bolt of lightning from a seemingly clear night sky. She was _making the lightning with her powers_.

Erik felt his mouth water even as Bobby, startled by the command, lost his balance on his ice slide and crashed unceremoniously into the wall. He landed on his ass with a yelp and promptly started wailing at volumes his small body should not have been able to produce.

The blonde girl relented with a grunt of frustration and knelt next to him. She plucked the album out of his hands and with uncanny control, sent it flying up the stairs on a gust of wind. Weather mage. Elemental of the highest order. _So powerful_.

 _She’s also fifteen years old and was used by her people as a weather-machine from the age of two on,_ Charles informed Erik, slipping into his mind like missing pieces slotting back into place.

Erik found his gaze drawn to the top of the stairs, where the telepath showed up a moment later, the little redhead on his hand, leading the way. He gave a small wave, which Emma returned, much to Erik’s surprise.

She wasn’t usually this… open.

 _Oh, please,_ she thought at him. _I’m perfectly open to anyone who can tie you in knots the way he does._

The little girl at Charles’s side laughed, loud and bell-like. Charles frowned briefly and she hunched a bit into herself. “But the white lady is funny,” she protested.

Charles gave no outward sign, but she slumped further. “Okay. Sorry. I’ll try.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs and the girl disengaged from the other telepath. “’Ro,” she asked, “Want to watch a movie? I have to distract myself.”

The other girl considered briefly, then nodded, her eyes losing their white shine suddenly and turning a calm, deep brown that fit her skin tone much better. Outside, the low buzz of an impending storm receded. She stood with a last pat on the little boy’s shoulder and let herself be towed from the room. Charles smiled briefly at Erik, half apologetic, and then knelt next to the boy, who flung himself into the man’s arms.

“What happened, Bobby?”

Between sniffles, the boy explained that he’d stolen ‘Ro’s book and she’d got mad and he’d runned away and then he’d crashed.

“Were you using your powers inside again?”

Looking decidedly guilty, the kid nodded. Not that Charles had really needed to ask, seeing as there was a damp trail leading across the hardwood floor straight to the spot where Bobby had crashed, but as least the boy was honest.

“What did we say about that?”

“Not ‘less it’s a ‘mergency,” the kid parroted dutifully.

Charles nodded. “Exactly. So how about you apologize to our visitors for making a spectacle and then you can go with Alex to see what John and Marie are up to?”

With a very grave sigh, the little boy squirmed in Charles’s arms until he was looking at Erik and Emma. He seemed to exhibit none of the fear children usually showed vampires, almost instinctively.

 _Ah,_ Charles whispered, _But there is no reason for him to be scared, is there?_

Erik made a sound that was halfway between a snarl and a sigh. Idealists. Adorable, the whole lot of them. Tasty, too. Charles quirked a smile at that but said nothing.

Bobby, meanwhile, stammered through an apology that seemed to utterly charm Emma. She was cooing at the boy that he was forgiven and how sweet he was and Erik had never, ever seen her like this. It was almost like she wasn’t a soulless machine of blood and fashion.

 _Shut up,_ she snapped. _He’s adorable._

Three hundred years dead, and the woman finally realized she had ovaries. What the fuck? Just then yet another kid showed up, although this one looked like he was at least old enough to drive. He was blond and all American and Erik would have taken a bite out of that. He smelled of fire and ashes, though, which made him reluctant to get close to the kid. An elemental, probably. Fire.

The amount of power in this house was staggering.

“You rang?” the kid asked, already holding out his arms for Bobby to launch himself into. There was a comical hissing sound, as water and fire elemental touched and Erik bit back a snort of amusement.

The warm touch of humor in his mind let him know Charles had picked up on his thoughts. “Alex,” the telepath said, “be so kind as to take care of the little ones for a while? Raven was supposed to be here and take them half an hour ago, but she seems to be having yet another disagreement with Logan. I would do it, but we have guests.”

Alex quickly looked Erik and Emma over and the distrust in his eyes was obvious. It wasn’t, however, the blind fear that took over most humans – at least those that weren’t brainless bloodbags with no survival instinct. It was real caution and Erik could see the calculation behind the boy’s eyes. He knew how to fight in a pinch, and he would, too.

 _Alex and his brother spent some time living on the streets,_ Charles supplied, readily enough. Ah, yes, that would do it.

Alex, unaware of their communication, made a face. “I’m supposed to be meeting Hank in twenty. It’s date night, Prof. Can’t someone else look after the rugrats?”

Charles sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry. There’s no-one else around at the moment. But,” he held up a hand when Alex made to whine some more. “if you and Hank take care of the children until Raven comes, you can take out the convertible after. Deal?”

Erik didn’t need to hear the boy’s agreement to know it was a deal. His eyes grew wide and he swallowed and practically started salivating on the spot. He hefted an impatient Bobby higher on his hip and nodded eagerly.

Charles suddenly grimaced and waved a hand for the boy to go. “Please,” he said, “I do not need to know what you plan to do to your boyfriend in my car.”

Alex grinned, waggled his eyebrows and simply said, “Shouldn’t look then.”

Charles made an adorable _eeeep_ sound and called after the retreating teenager, “Be sure to have the upholstery cleaned in the morning, will you?”

Beside Erik, Emma was laughing hard enough to make a spectacle of herself, blood tears standing in the corners of her eyes from sheer mirth. Erik himself was restraining himself to twitching lips but, by the gods, this madhouse was entertaining. Charles caught the thought quite clearly, if his expression was anything to go by.

“Come on then,” he said, waving toward the stairs. “That should buy us five minutes of silence.”

Emma looked from one man to the other, then flapped her hand toward where the girls had disappeared to watch a movie and announced, “You two love birds go enjoy the quiet. I will be snacking on the virgins.”

Erik came up with seven different ways to torture his brat of a childe before Charles had even finished blushing to the roots of his hair. That raging bitch just _had_ to stir up shit wherever she went, didn’t she?

 _I learned from the best,_ she smirked into his mind.

He gave her the mental equivalent of a kick in the rear and announced, “I am going to burn all your shoes as soon as you die today.”

She pouted. Gods help him, his three-hundred-year-old, ruthless, heartless bitch of a childe was pouting at him. Where had he gone wrong with her? Not enough punishment? Not enough time spent in dank basement cells? Not enough silver jewelry? What?

“Erik,” Charles scolded, sounding half scandalized, half amused. Emma looked between them again, reading something she wasn’t meant to read, and then snorted. She stalked off with clicking heels.

Charles, looking vaguely like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scream, asked, “How likely is she to try and snack on my children?”

Try?

_Yes, Erik, try. I could stop her, just as I did stop you._

Such arrogance. Such brilliance. Charles spread his arms, inviting Erik toward the stairs. They climbed them, Erik regretting that Charles’s manners made him let Erik lead. He would have enjoyed the view from behind a lot more, he was sure.

Behind him, Charles laughed. _Perhaps I am enjoying the view, too,_ he suggested. Didn’t he know the danger that came from flirting with a vampire?

His chortle said he did and didn’t care.

Before Erik knew it he was standing in front of a door he knew without a doubt led to Charles’s private study. How he knew he had no idea, but he had found the way here blindly and without asking. _You led me,_ he realized.

Charles clapped him on the shoulder – touched him voluntarily, strange, strange human – and slipped past, opening the door and waving Erik into a cozy, wood-paneled study. There was even a fireplace, unlit though apparently well used. Extinguished to accommodate the easily flammable guests, no doubt.

They sat in old armchairs, across from each other, and Charles asked, “Why are you here?”

“Don’t you know already?”

“I can guess,” the telepath admitted, modestly. Erik could smell his amusement and didn’t know whether to be delighted or angered by it. He settled for delighted, mostly because he suspected that anything else would just be ignored by Charles. Utterly. “I have neglected you,” the little human went on to say.

Erik opened his mouth to automatically protest the term ‘neglect’, like he was some sort of pet, but Charles got there first. “A bad choice of words, forgive me. I have simply been impossibly busy and I was… unsure about whether or not you wanted me in your head constantly as I have been these past few days.”

Lie.

“Lie.”

Charles blinked, apparently unused to being called out. Erik crossed his legs at the ankle and waited, smirking.

Finally, with a sigh, the human, admitted, “Do you have any idea how addictive your mind is, my friend? I could drown in you.”

Something flashed in front of Erik’s mind’s eye, a dark, rolling ocean, waves tall enough to sweep any man off his feet. It was the angry, stormy sea of his human life, full of dangers, full of darkness and somewhere in the middle of it, a flash of blue eyes and light. Charles. Charles, drowning in the sea of Erik’s mind.

“You are afraid of me,” he summarized, feeling inexplicably disappointed.

“No,” Charles denied, promptly. “I am tempted by you. I want – “

Erik held breath he didn’t need, but he never found out what Charles wanted because suddenly the door burst open and none other than the Packmaster came storming in, a look of disgust and anger on his face and… a kitten cradled tenderly to his chest.

He opened his mouth to say something, then abruptly shut it when he noticed the vampire in the room and snarled, too sharp teeth bared, lip curled. Erik, unwilling to stoop to the animal’s level, simply smirked with a polite hint of fang and ostentatiously leaned further back in his chair, folding his hands across his stomach.

The Packmaster scowled fiercely, first at him, then at Charles. In utter contradiction to his apparent anger, he was still holding the kitten gently, almost tenderly. It made a pitiful, yowling sound and Erik could have sworn it pouted.

Logan kept staring at Charles and eventually Erik realized that the wolf was talking to the telepath, whose lips were twitching more and more.

“Chuck!” the mutt eventually barked. “Damn you, bub!”

Charles gave in and laughed out loud. Logan shot Erik a venomous glare, snarled again and then apparently gave in to whatever Charles was demanding because with a snap of his teeth, he stalked closer to them and flung the kitten into the telepath’s lap.

“Make her change back before I do, bub,” the wolf demanded, a growl tainting his voice. Sloppy for someone so old, so powerful. But apparently the Packmaster had decided to ignore the Sheriff’s presence utterly and pretend there were no political ramifications to them meeting each other in the house they were both sworn to protect. Erik bit back a grimace since he still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to cause this. Oh, right. Charles had happened.

A pretty face and a promise of a body and unlimited power. That was what had done the trick.

Charles caught the kitten and cradled it in his lap, stroking behind its ears. “What did you fight about this time?” he asked, laughter still dancing in his eyes.

The mutt growled and said nothing. Charles looked down at the kitten and snorted in amusement. That was roughly when Erik caught on to the fact that the kitten was not actually a kitten. He sniffed the air and realized that it was Charles’s little adoptive sister, the shifter.

 _She’s not actually adopted,_ Charles piped up. Even in his mind, the laughter was audible. _I am afraid I am too used to pack customs. Only shifting family members are considered ‘blood’. Since I do not change, the pack does not call me Raven’s blood. I have taken on their customs, I am afraid. Genetically speaking, Raven is my half sister. Technically speaking, I am the one who raised her after our parents died._

He smiled tenderly down at the kitten and then asked again, “What did you fight about this time to make her change into a kitten, Logan?”

“None’a your business, Chuck. Just make the bitch change back so we can finish.”

Erik bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing out loud and concentrated on transmitting the entire situation to Emma, simply because he wanted to make her laugh out loud at nothing at all. It would serve her right.

Beyond that, the whole thing was simply too funny not to abuse. Apparently the Packmaster and the little shifter had gotten into a fight and instead of arguing like an adult, the girl had turned into a kitten to get out of the conversation. And the Packmaster had no idea how to deal with it.

The ammunition this gave Erik would last him for _decades._

“I’m terribly sorry, Logan,” Charles managed with a straight face. “But I try not to get into other people’s lovers’ spats. Least of all my sister’s.”

It was a thousand years of practice and nothing else that allowed Erik to keep a straight face at the realization that the big, gruff, powerful Packmaster was utterly wrapped around the finger of a little thing of a shifter barely out of her diapers.

Logan growled at him. “I know what you’re thinking, Lensherr. Shut it.”

“I thought Charles was the telepath,” Erik pointed out, far too cheerfully. He got flipped the bird for his troubles and, paradoxically, decided that he might actually like this flustered, annoyed version of his animal counterpart more than the usual, put-together version with his brother hovering over his shoulder like a promise of violence.

He pressed a hand to his dead heart, and faked surprise. “For me?”

Another growl. Charles intervened before fur started flying by grabbing the kitten by the scruff and raised her to eye level with a sigh. “You promised to look after the children, today. Have your spat later, dear.”

The kitten seemed to think back at him, because Charles shook his head. “I don’t care, Raven. Actions. Consequences. _Again_. You promised to look after them, now you will. _Change back_.”

He sounded stricter than Erik had thought him capable of. Harder. He was impressed.

The telepath dropped the kitten, which gave him a mutinous look and then slunk behind the desk to change back. A moment later a naked girl crouched where a kitten had been. She straightened with a petulant look on her face, arms crossed over her chest, but not in modesty.

“You’re not my alpha, Charles,” she snapped.

“No,” Logan answered before Charles could. “I am. An’ I’m tellin’ you to listen to him, kitten. Last time you didn’t it ended with him.” He pointed at Erik to illustrate his point and Raven sunk into herself, the smell of anger and shame flooding the room.

Apparently a night in a cage and her brother’s soul at stake had been enough to teach her a lesson. Maybe there was hope for her yet.

 _You’re too hard on her,_ Charles piped up.

 _You’re too soft on her,_ Erik shot back. If Emma did half of what Raven seemed to get away with on a regular basis, Erik would flog her. With silver. For days.

_We’re not vampires._

_You’re not human, either._

“I’ll get dressed,” Raven interrupted their conversation and turned toward the door. “Then I’ll find the kids. Sorry, Charles.”

She didn’t look him in the eye as she spoke, suddenly a good little shifter. She stopped on her path to the door, close to the Packmaster. He sighed, put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll finish this later, kitten.”

She nodded and slunk out, shortly followed by Logan, who actually managed a civil nod in the vampire’s direction before leaving. Erik returned it, even if he was still smirking.

The door shut behind him and Erik was finally, finally going to get to have a much needed conversation with his telepath, when Emma’s voice rang through his, and by the look of things, Charles’s mind, too. Funny how, surrounded by telepaths, Emma’s own hampered skills seemed to expand. Erik wondered if that was because Charles and the little redhead were helping her along, or if she was doing it herself. A question for later.

_Can I take the girls shopping?_

_It’s after nine, Miss Frost,_ Charles returned doubtfully. He should have been yelling that no, he wasn’t going to let his children go anywhere with a vampire, but, well, he was Charles. Erik was starting to understand that that made the man a whole different kind of animal. And his strangeness seemed to extend to his children. A whole house full of powerful, talented people who weren’t afraid of a little fang and blood. Tempting, fascinating, dangerous. Just how Erik liked it.

 _Please,_ Emma shot back. _I own half a dozen boutiques. They will stay open for as long as I want them to. And I want to dress your girls up._

Charles looked to Erik for advice, like they were setting up their children for a play date. They were, in a way. Emma snarled. Erik snarled right back and shrugged at Charles, who mirrored the action.

_Very well. Have then back by midnight, please._

The cheer that went up from the downstairs living room was deafening, followed a moment later by a loud _Scott!_

Erik was pretty sure everyone in the house jumped six feet high at the yell. As Charles stood to sprint out of the room in a panic, muttering something about fire elementals getting angry being a bad thing, the vampire slouched in his seat.

Maybe he’d kidnap Charles. He owned a rather nice, remote cabin in Canada. He could hire a few humans to do the job for him during the day, have them take the little telepath up there.

Maybe then they’d finally manage to have a conversation.

 _Oh God,_ Emma sent from downstairs. _You really are that desperate._

Erik was definitely burning all her shoes.

+


End file.
